


sokovia

by black_nata



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-04
Updated: 2015-05-04
Packaged: 2018-03-29 02:02:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3878164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/black_nata/pseuds/black_nata
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He's determined to stay here until the kid wakes up, until Pietro opens his eyes so Clint can grab him by the ears and yell <i>"What were you thinking?"</i> right into his face.</p>
            </blockquote>





	sokovia

 

In dreams, all there is is black.

Black earth against black skies, Sokovia burned to a crisp and Clint can do nothing but hold his breath and stare. Somewhere in the rubble, somewhere under all that brick and metal, buried in a makeshift tomb that was only meant for Clint, lies a boy that wasted his blood over him.

" _Dumb brat_ ," Clint says sometimes. The dreams differ every day. Sometimes, the boy crawls out of the wreckage to stand tall in front of him, bloodied and all. " _You're a dumb brat, you know that? What were you thinking?_ "

Sometimes, the boy doesn't come out at all. Sometimes, Clint tries his best to move the boulders. He breaks his fingers on the rocks, shoots a thousand arrows, one by one, to no avail, and then falls to his knees where Pietro's hand is limply sticking out between unforgiving clusters of bricks.

He wakes up in the Helicarrier infirmary. Bright lights over his head and the taste of metal, stitches in places that already have a myriad of scars. Another mission gone wrong. It's becoming more and more obvious that he's getting too old for this type of living.

"Hey, sleeping beauty."

Natasha puts a glass of water and two white pills by his bed before he even has the chance to feel the dull, insistent throbbing in his skull. Smart woman. Intuitive. Keeps Clint in one piece even in moments when all he wants to do is fall apart.

"Wanna go home," he murmurs quiety. Drugs tend to do that to him, make him say things he would rather keep bottled up inside until they eat him whole. He wishes he could take it back. Take everything back. Wind back the clock and throw himself in front of the wave of bullets and wash the kid's blood off his hands. Clint grimaces.

"Hey," Natasha offers. "Hey." She rests one hand on his shoulder, lets the weight of it bring him back to reality. "Don't do that to yourself, Barton."

It's easier said than done. Clint stays quiet. He fiddles with the IV cord after the nurse removes it. Natasha studies him with knowing eyes and Clint really, really doesn't want to go home, but there's only home and the Helicarrier, and Clint can't stay here, either.

Without a word, Natasha leaves to prep the Quinjet. Clint knows that she knows he'll come around eventually, like he always does, but ever since the raid on Strucker's HYDRA outpost, things have been significantly stagnant. The same old wounds keep opening. Things are rarely allowed to heal before something else comes running out of the shadows at them.

Clint lifts himself out of the bed and stumbles to the deck. There's really no point lingering on it. No point at all. He rips his stitches climbing into the Quinjet and all he can think about is how stark the kid's hair looked against Sokovia's black earth.

 

—

 

In the end, they name the baby after Pietro.

Clint has always devoted his life to the people that were smart or stupid enough to save it, and the quick little bastard isn't an exception. He can't think of any other way to repay the kid besides looking after his sister. Maybe then, he thinks, the guilt just might stop eating at him after a while.

They have a small party, Clint and the team, for the new baby. Wanda doesn't cry when he tells her, but something in her eyes glimmers like unshed tears in the farmhouse's shade.

She's been in and out of missions ever since she put on the uniform of an Avenger, taking no time to mourn. No one asks her to. It's not like she's the only one on the team ignoring her problems, and besides, Wanda and the Vision make a formidable pair, and taking a day off isn't exactly recommended when saving the world is part of the job description.

Clint considers an early retirement. After all, what's a guy with a bow and arrow doing on a team of enhanced super-soldiers? Even Natasha has a little juice from her Red Room days. He hates himself for even having the thought. It's shitty and mean. But ever since that kid...

Clint goes back to S.H.I.E.L.D a month later, after he realizes that sitting around while the world burns makes the guilt a thousand times worse.

He leaves Laura with her sister and a thousand gadgets Tony gave them at the baby shower that he guaranteed would make things a lot easier. Tony's been raining down gifts ever since Clint made the big reveal. Clint doesn't have the heart to tell him there are only so many holopads a house needs.

As always, the mission ends with him in pieces. Natasha has to scrape him off the floor of a Somali prison and that same ugly wound at his side is open again, all mangled flesh and shrapnel. Clint wonders what the odds are of a bullet hitting the exact same spot three times in a row. Dr. Cho asks the same thing when she sees him.

He wakes up in the Helicarrier infirmary again. It's all getting repetitive. Clint feels numb around the edges, like he's barely alive, like any moment he might slip from this soothing pattern of monotony and find himself drowning in regret.

The IV cord is in knots when he's done with it. Natasha helps him stow the shit again so he can go back to his wife and kids clean, without the stain of work all over him, and then she and Hill are talking outside the door, just out of hearing range.

All this spells out one thing. Liability. Clint knows he's become one. It doesn't help that whenever a bullet whizzes past him, all he can think of is the taste of frost on his tongue, the smell of gunfire and the smug look on that dumb kid's face as he tossed him around in the Sokovian snow.

Fury shows up just as he's boarding the Quinjet home. "Barton," he says. That's never good. There's a look on Fury's face like he knows something that Clint doesn't. But then again, Fury always knows things that others don't. "We got intel on an illegal shipment of vibranium ready to leave Wakanda. Hill's setting up a team to intercept."

There are questions left unsaid somewhere in there. Obviously, this is some sort of test. Clint runs a hand through short hair, lets out a sigh before nodding. "Time?"

"One hour."

Wakanda. The place has an awful extravagance about it that baffles the mind. Vibranium deposits stacked up to high heaven, taller than the statues of black panthers scattered here and there across the jungle. Everything about this country smells rich. Even the air.

A guy named T'Challa is waiting for them at the border and— what the hell is he wearing? Apparently, they can't cross over without his permission, so the Quinjet lands roughly atop the shimmering waves of Lake Turkana.

"The smugglers are on the opposite shore," T'Challa informs them. "Some of them are still scattered in the jungle. The others have taken the west. You will take the southeast. We will both meet in the south and take out the rest of them."

Clint has a bad feeling about this. Like the bad feeling he had when Selvig opened that door and all hell came pouring out. "Others?" he looks at Hill questioningly. "Fury didn't mention another team."

Judging by the look on Hill's face, she didn't know either.

They follow T'Challa through the brush and take out everything in sight quietly. _Other team_ , Clint murmurs under his breath. And then Fury complains about having trust issues. Clint pulls a stealth arrow out of a man's sternum and hopes there aren't any snakes in the bushes he's hiding in.

Then, a noise. A flash of red on the southern shore. Wanda. T'Challa motions at Hill with a gloved, clawed hand, and then they're moving through the jungle like big cats on a hunt. It briefly registers that Clint needs to stop watching so much Animal Planet in his spare time, and then, another flash, blue and white, moving faster than anything—

"You didn't see that coming?"

_Fuck_.

Green eyes stare teasingly down at him and  _fuck_ , this is a test, this is a test so he bottles it up just like he should, focuses on the mission, the mission, takes out the militia moving into Kenya with insistent patience, secures the vibranium shipment, shakes T'Challa's hand and boards the Quinjet and when it's over, when it's all over, when it's all done and the mission is over and there's nothing left to compromise, Clint punches the kid so hard it shatters his own wrist.

 

—

 

They codename him 'Quicksilver'.

Clint thinks it's funny because he's really quick and his hair is silver and everything's a big joke, ha ha, Pietro isn't dead and the numbness he's felt for so long turns into rage.

"Since when?" he asks afterwards.

Wanda plays with her necklace as she watches Pietro dash around the new Avengers training grounds, so full of life. "Three weeks ago."

Clint feels his fists clench. His wrist still hurts, a dull, persistent ache that he knows will linger long after everything has healed. "Did Nat know?" he asks. Wanda shakes her head. She feels bad about it, too, Clint can tell, but that doesn't soften the blow. "Why?"

Wanda gulps. She stops fiddling with her jewelry and turns her fiery eyes on him, and then, "You..." she sighs, "You named your child after him. I didn't know how to tell you without ruining everything. So I kept it to myself until Fury found a way to tell you."

It's all like some high-school level drama. Like everyone's been gossiping behind his back and Clint's the weird reject that sits at the back of the class and eats lunch alone during recess. Serves him right, Clint thinks. That's what he gets for messing around with some stupid, punk-ass kids. Stupid kids that can run at the speed of light and move things with their minds, and on the rare occasion of death, rise up from the ashes and heal like nothing even happened.

He hates them both. Hates Wanda for not telling him, hates Pietro for...

Clint doesn't even know what for. All he knows is that every time he looks at the kid, all he wants to do is grab him by that unruly bleached mop and slam him up against the nearest wall. To teach him a lesson, Clint tells himself. Yeah, to teach him a lesson.

He leaves the compound without a word to Pietro. The Sokovian calls after him as he walks out the front door, but Clint only breathes in, walks faster, and doesn't let that breath out until he's driving out of Upstate New York and into the parking lot of some filthy, nameless bar.

 

—

 

Sometime in November, Thor shows up out of nowhere with hands full of wrapped boxes, saying something about replacing a toy he broke at Clint's farm.

They have a little update debrief in Tony's tower. Last he saw the place, the whole team was in pieces, Ultron was in the wind with Natasha, and Pietro was falling through the glass ceiling to land comically at Clint's feet. Then, there was the Vision.

"Feels kinda lonely without JARVIS, you know? I got no one to gossip with over a late night martini," Tony mourns.

On the holograph is a three-dimensional rendition of what's left of Sokovia, little digital buildings on fire and upturned cars, a place more rubble than country. Clint thought he would leave it for good once the whole business with Ultron was finished. But here they are. Staring at maps for the second time and listening to the drone of Cap's voice as he describes the situation, because someone thought it'd be a great idea to salvage the remains of Ultron's robot army for purposes unknown.

Of course, the Maximoff twins have to be there. Wanda, with her insufferable brother fidgeting restlessly beside her, watching the schematics with wide green eyes that keep reminding Clint that he's just a kid, that they're both kids and they shouldn't even be here wasting their lives.

It's a pretentious argument. Clint knows he was younger than that when he started. Natasha, even younger. Everyone on this team is here because of damaged childhoods that weren't fixed in time. Almost makes him want to pull out the world's smallest violin and start playing.

"Barton, you're air support. Natasha, ground control. Maximoffs..." Steve pauses, "Just do what you do best."

"Kick ass?" Pietro laughs.

God, Clint just wants to kick his teeth in. Wants to wipe that stupid smirk off the guy's lips and lick the metal that comes bubbling up.

_Shit_.

 

—

 

It comes to a close, this thing that's been building up ever since the kid turned up alive, when Pietro throws himself in front of Clint again, blocking a rain of bullets for the second time in his life as the rest of the team looks on in horror.

"Goddamn moron," Clint chants. "Goddamn, suicidal moron," over and over again and watches the kid's grey shirt turn black with blood.

As Thor flies to the Helicarrier with the kid in his arms, Wanda unleashes an energy beam so vast, it turns half the forest into bits of splinters, and the shipment of robot parts into scrap metal. There. Mission complete. Now Clint doesn't have to worry about compromising anything due to his deteriorating emotional state.

"You alright, Barton?" Cap asks once they're on the Quinjet, on the way back to the Helicarrier where that dumb brat is probably dying all over again.

Clint doesn't speak. He knows Steve can see the tremor in his hands, the tension in his back, and there's nothing he can do about it. Cap doesn't bother him with any more questions. Once they land, he ushers Clint out of the jet, saying, "I'll give Fury the debrief, just go," and Clint isn't one to argue with his elders.

There's no one in the infirmary but Pietro, spread out across the white sheets, soaking them red. Wanda runs in a second later. Clint can smell the ozone on her, the sharp perfume of burning oxygen. She looks at her brother's body and says nothing.

"He is healing," a deep voice echoes in the overwhelming silence. "Resting. The bullets went right through him, merely grazing anything important. All is well."

They both let out a sigh at Thor's words, and after a minute, Wanda runs out towards the deck, quite likely to get as far away as possible from this flying death trap. Poor kid. Sometimes, she can't control this thing. Sometimes, she has to leave for barren, faraway places in case it all comes bursting out and taking everything she loves with it.

Clint gets it. If he had powers like hers, he'd be losing control at the sight of Pietro, too. He lets out a sigh, sinking in the chair beside the kid's bed and leaning back. Thor gives him a friendly pat on the shoulder before leaving for the landing pad, smiling at Clint's murmur of thanks.

Goddamn stupid, suicidal brat. Clint has a lot of names like those to throw at him when he wakes up. He's determined to stay here until the kid does, until Pietro opens his eyes so Clint can grab him by the ears and yell " _What were you thinking?_ " right into his face.

But he doesn't. When Pietro finally stirs an hour later, Clint swallows everything down.

"Bet you didn't see that c—"

"Shut up," he whispers. "Just shut up. Is that all you ever say? Hmm? You know what, don't talk. Don't even speak. Alright? 'Cause..."

Pietro gives him a hurt look. Stupid kid. No matter how many times Clint might yell it at him, paint it with colourful pictures for him like he's a baby, the little bastard just won't get it.

So, he takes Pietro's hand and gives it a squeeze. Then leans down and presses a kiss to the back of his palm. Clint doesn't know what the hell he's doing. He has a wife and kids, for God's sake. He  _named_ one of them after this punk, this guy half his age who's supposed to be long dead, who's looking at him like a confused puppy.

Maybe this is a dream. Maybe he'll wake up any minute now, sprawled on the lifecarrier's seats over Sokovia right next to Pietro and it's all a dream and they both never made it...

Of course, the dumb kid has to go ahead and kiss him. Of course, Clint has to make things worse by kissing back. Pietro opens his mouth with a soft moan that goes straight through him like a shock, half pleasure, half disgust, and oh,  _God_ , Clint knows he fucked up bad on this one when Pietro tries to pull him down on top of him.

"No, no, no, no," Clint rips himself away. "Stop. Just stop. What are you, like, nineteen? I—I can't do this. I just. I can't."

He doesn't bother looking back to know there's pain written all over Pietro's face. But he's just a kid. Clint jogs all the way back to his quarters and doesn't stop feeling like he's about to throw up until he accidentally falls asleep.

 

—

 

"I fucked up."

That's the only thing he says when Laura picks up the phone. On the other end of the line, Clint hears nothing but static, the occasional whistling of the southern breeze and the sound of morning cartoons.

"What did you do?" Laura asks, so Clint tells her. He tells her about Pietro and about this stupid, stupid thing that's gotten into him that he can't wash away like he always does and come back home clean. He tells her everything, because he owes her that, at least. He owes it to their kids.

Laura stays quiet for a while. He can hear her thinking, hear the gears in her mind spin. He expects her to tell him to come home again, like she did after Ultron. To remind him he doesn't need to put his life on the line for S.H.I.E.L.D anymore. That super-soldiers and gods and enhanced eastern European brats can deal with it.

But she doesn't. She tells him something along the lines of "deal with it and get over it" before saying goodbye, and Clint knows it won't be that easy, but he'll give it a try.

 

—

 

The new Avengers base in New York looks like one of Tony Stark's wet dreams. Or so Clint imagines.

Expensive white floors and holographic panels in every corner of every room. Top-to-bottom glass windows that are probably a bad idea, considering this is where every villain on this planet and the next is going to be trying to break into, sooner or later, but Clint figures they've probably set up some sort of magical force field around the compound just in case.

"Barton, my man," Wilson looks incredibly chipper in his new uniform. "Thought you said you were retired."

Clint laughs as they shake hands. "I thought I was retired, too. But you know how it is. One day you're sipping margaritas in Jamaica and suddenly a swarm of hostile extraterrestrials comes flying right out of the sky. Can't really get away even if you want to."

Sam beams that infectuous smile of his and asks, "So, you here for Romanoff? Or are you giving a shot at training the new recruits?"

The smile on his face almost slips, but Clint makes himself keep it. "Something like that," he says. Sam raises an eyebrow. "Know where I can find Quicksilver?"

Saying the codename helps. Clint always gets a shit-eating grin on his face when he does, like it sounds so stupid he can barely keep it together. The look on his face must be pretty convincing, because Sam loosens up after a while, claps him on the shoulder and tells him to take a hard left six doors down the opposite hall.

Clint breathes out a sigh once he's out of hearing range. His feet carry him slowly to the guy's room at a lazy, almost sluggish pace. This is a dumb idea, he thinks halfway there. This probably isn't what Laura meant by dealing with it, but maybe this is the only way to get over it. Or make it worse. There's always _that_ possibility.

Pietro opens the door a millisecond after he knocks on it. Figures. Does the kid ever slow down? Clint stands there, stunned, like he was hoping Pietro wouldn't open the door at all. This is a dumb idea, he repeats. As dumb as it can get.

"Are you coming in or what?" the kid asks with that thick Sokovian accent. He steps aside and waits for Clint to make up his mind. Stupid. Everything's stupid. The guy has pretty much infected Clint with his stupidity, and now they're here, trying to accomplish something that should damn well be left alone.

Clint's too damn slow. Pietro grabs him by the lapels of his leather jacket and pulls him in, pulls him up against the pristine glass desk in the middle of this huge, expensive, high-tech room, and Clint is in so deep there's no way of knowing whether he'll ever get out clean—

"I'm twenty-five, by the way," Pietro murmurs against his throat. Like that makes it any better. He's still just a punk, young and naive, his lips soft where they brush over Clint's weathered lines. When he says nothing, the Sokovian takes Clint's hands in his surprisingly strong grasp and puts them under his shirt. "C'mon, touch me."

Clint trembles, weak at the knees. It's good that he's sitting on a desk. It's good that Pietro has one knee pressed hard between his legs, that he's moaning at every graze of Clint's rough hands against his skin like he's trying to put on a good show.

"Stop, stop," Clint pushes him back. At the sad look on the brat's face, he adds, "Slow down a little, yeah?"

That smug grin again. For once, Clint follows the urge and takes the kid's white hair in his two hands, pulls his head back and listens to the sharp groan that leaves those pink lips. Pietro moans something in Sokovian before Clint moves in for a taste.

A month ago, Clint was standing over the kid's broken body and watching the life pour out of him and into the dirt. Every possibility had died with him. Or, at least, Clint thought it had. But now here he is again, without a single scar on that smooth skin, thrumming with life against him, and Clint doesn't even know where to begin.

Clint's face aches when he pulls away. Dumb punk doesn't even know how to shave right, he thinks, laughing as his teeth graze against Pietro's stubbled jaw. The guy already has one hand working at his belt. Impatient little brat. One of these days, Clint might just teach him how to go slow.

Oh, there's a bad thought. Ever since he laid eyes on the bastard, bad thoughts are all Clint has had. Like laying him out on a bed and watching his green eyes roll back with every thrust. There's another one.

So he does just that. Pietro, ever the vocal little shit, is surprisingly quiet after Clint strips him down and opens that muscled body up with rough fingers. Quiet, even as Clint pushes in. All that phony facade shatters in pieces and what Pietro is left with, what Clint is left with, is a writhing mess rucking up the pristine white sheets.

For a moment, all Clint can think about is whether this is the guy's first time. He doesn't spend long wondering. Pietro pulls him down with eager arms and makes him go faster, and when that isn't enough, he gets on top and rides Clint like he plans on breaking him in half.

Not a virgin, Clint decides. Definitely not a virgin. He watches the kid come all over himself, all over Clint's chest, all over the sheets with a shout in Sokovian that would have definitely echoed across the compound if not for good soundproofing, with that thought still in his mind.

And then Pietro has to go and take Clint's cock in his mouth and swallow him to the root, because adding insult to injury is never enough. He buries a hand in the kid's white hair and lets the wave wash over him. It's done. It's done, but somehow it isn't over. Clint looks at the ceiling just so he doesn't have to look at Pietro's glossy pink lips.

"Too much for you, eh, old man?" he laughs. What a brat. He sprawls out on top of Clint with a languid ease, heavy and hot from top to toe. Looking up close, Clint spots that blue haze that's always around him, always thrumming, always pulsing with life.

God, what a dumb idea. Pietro's still pressing kisses all over him. He'll probably be ready for another round in seconds, what with that enhanced metabolism of his, and Clint's lying here, ready to go to sleep.

Bad, bad idea.

 

—

 

They keep it secret. They make it a once-a-month type of thing, something to ease the tension, to diffuse this ticking time bomb of a team that they've made themselves into.

Natasha doesn't say a thing when Clint finally tells her, spilling his heart out over shots of tequila. They drink in silence. The kind of silence that feels judgement-free. She's the only one who needs to know. Her and Wanda. Of course, on the Maximoff's part, it's the simple matter of telepathy. Or complex. Simple and complex. Just like everything else Clint has ever had to deal with.

He doesn't bring any of his burdens back home. He comes back clean, with all his secrets buried safe behind lock and key, right next to the list of everyone he's killed.

These are things his family doesn't need to know. But every now and then, he has the occasional nightmare. Every now and then, he finds himself beneath Sokovian clouds, on earth as black as nothingness, screaming at a body buried under layers and layers of bricks that he couldn't save.

And if he ever wakes up screaming Pietro's name into the crisp night air, terrified half to death over restless, fading dreams, and if Laura takes him in her arms and rocks him back and forth like the child he never was and says " _It's only a dream, honey, it's only a dream. Everyone's safe. You're safe, he's safe, we're all safe..._ "

He'll blame it on Sokovia.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Please acknowledge that this work has been labeled as 'Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings', and any requests to alter, edit, or add warnings to this work are in violation of the creator's right to apply the aforementioned label as provided by the AO3 tagging system.


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